Although David Brooks, a NY Times conservative (but definitely not pro-Trump) columnist, points out that the way it has been, Democrats could pick a Northern Californian judge, or Republicans a Texas judge, to pass judgements which would then have national consequences on the basis of a single judicial decision (interview can be reviewed here.) He says there are still avenues to litigate executive orders through class actions and other means.

To rub the salt, DJT made a platitudinous speech about the judiciary being ‘a threat to democracy’, when it is common knowledge that the ‘three equal branches’ of Government - Congress, Executive and Judiciary - are essential to American democracy. As always, Trump projects onto his opponents the very crimes that he is undertaking in his pursuit of unbridled power as he consolidates his grip.

The Trump autocracy makes another leap towards totalitarianism with today's Supreme Court ruling. It effectively neuters the ability of judges to halt the enforcement of executive orders on legal grounds.

What can individual federal courts immediately do when the president issues a blatantly unconstitutional order? The Supreme Court gave its answer on Friday morning: Not much.

In an astonishing act of deference to the executive branch, the Supreme Court essentially said that district judges cannot stop an illegal presidential order from going into effect nationwide. A judge can stop an order from affecting a given plaintiff or state, if one has the wherewithal to file a lawsuit. But if there’s no lawsuit in the next state over, the president can get away with virtually anything he wants. ...

But if the courts can’t stop illegal activity in the White House on a national basis, what good are they? That was the point made by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in two of the most fervent dissents in recent memory. Both were clearly incredulous that the majority was willing to stand back and let Trump undermine a fundamental principle of citizenship in place for 157 years. Sotomayor, joined by Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan, said the Trump administration knows it can’t win a decision that its order is constitutional, so it is instead playing a devious game: applying the order to as many people as possible who don’t file a lawsuit. “Shamefully,” she wrote, “this court plays along.” — The Supreme's Court's Intolerable Ruling

So having neutered Congress by purging it of any non-MAGA members, Trump has now successfully neutered the judiciary, the last bastion against his plainly totalitarian impulses.

Shame, America. Shame.

Hard to put markers on it, but the late nineteenth and early 20th c were the culmination of processes which arguably started with the Italian Renaissance. Descartes (1596 - 1650) was presented to me in undergraduate philosophy as ‘the first modern philosopher.’ Newton’s Principia was published 1687. They are two of the main architects of modern science (along with Galileo who was an approximate contemporary with Descartes.)

I’m pretty sure that’s how E A Burtt would see it also.

I have repeatedly pointed out that that this negative fact explains nothing. It opens up possibilities, but possibility is cheap. — Relativist

And I have repeatedly pointed out that in this ‘explanatory gap’ dwells the very self that is seeking to understand. And that deferring every question to science only perpetuates the ignoring of that. And when I do point it out, you deflect some more by framing it as a speculative question. When in reality the real question of philosophy is ‘know thyself’’

Nothing further to add.

a basic assumption of both science and philosophy: that the world is in some sense rational,
— Wayfarer

IMO, that's an unwarranted assumption. We can makes sense of the portions of reality we perceive and infer. That is not necessarily the whole of reality. I also argue that quantum mechanics isn't wholly intelligible. Rather, we grasp at it. Consider interpretations: every one of them is possible- what are we to do with that fact? I'm not a proponent of the Many-Worlds interpretation, but it's possibly true- and if so, it has significant metaphysical implications- more specific implications than the negative fact we're discussing. — Relativist

Well, to start with, I think any philosophy that declares a fortiori that the world is irrational effectively undermines itself. If reality is, at bottom, unintelligible, then all attempts at understanding—including scientific attempts—are undermined from the outset. That doesn’t mean we can grasp everything, but it does mean that the act of inquiry assumes a basic trust in the rational structure of reality.

As for quantum theory, it may well be telling us something not just about particles, but about the limits of a purely material ontology. That matter should turn out to be elusive and probabilistic rather than solid and mechanistic would not have surprised a Platonist (indeed Werner Heisenberg was a lifelong Platonist). There are many competing interpretations, of course, but several do allow for idealist or participatory readings, where observation plays an essential role. In my essay on the subject, I defend QBism (quantum baynsianism) in which the subjective act of observation is fundamental.

Sure, but that doesn't give epistemic license to fill the gap arbitrarily or with wishful thinking. — Relativist

To label philosophical spirituality as “wishful thinking” is to close off inquiry too quickly. These aren’t arbitrary insertions into an explanatory gap—they’re attempts to interpret the nature of that gap itself. The history of philosophy is filled with thinkers grappling rigorously with the limits of physical explanation—not because they didn’t understand science, but because they recognized that experience, meaning, and subjectivity resist reduction.

So if there's something “wishful” here, it's perhaps the wish that the scientific method could explain everything, when it was never designed to do that.

If you agree that methodological naturalism is the appropriate paradigm for the advance of science, where should the negative fact enter into my metaphysical musings? — Relativist

Methodological naturalism isn’t metaphysical naturalism, which is the attempt to apply the methods of science to the questions of philosophy. That is basically all that Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’ is saying: that the physical sciences must by design exclude a fundamental dimension of existence - the nature of being.

How should I revise my personal views on the (meta)nature of mind? Alternatives to physicalism also have explanatory gaps (e.g. the mind-body interaction problem of dualism). — Relativist

You're quite right that dualism has its own explanatory gaps—especially regarding mind-body interaction. But physicalism's own explanatory impasse around consciousness, intentionality, and meaning suggests that we shouldn't treat it as the default view merely because it's scientifically adjacent.

As for how to revise your views: simply remain open. You don't have to adopt dualism to explore non-physicalist possibilities. There are entire traditions—phenomenology, idealism, panpsychism, even non-dualist metaphysics from Eastern thought—that approach mind as primary or irreducible, without falling into obscurantism or dualism.

None of these views are without their own puzzles, but they start from a different intuition: that experience isn't something that emerges from matter, but rather something intrinsic to reality—or at least not alien to it. Even just entertaining that possibility might open new questions that physicalism can't easily ask.

Following that thread has lead me to the view that the sense of separateness, of otherness to the world, which characterises so much of modern thought, is really a form of consciousness. Thomas Nagel, in particular, puts the case in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. In a précis of his book, he says

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.*

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.

*This is plainly a reference to the same issue that David Chalmers describes in his Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, which also mentions Nagel's oft-quoted 1974 paper What is it like to be a Bat?

As far as I can see, postmodernism just regurgitates ideas that have been around for a long time and tries to apply them to modern life and politics — T Clark

This is probably a digression, but I think it's far more than that. The term 'post-' is significant - similar to the sense conveyed by 'post Christian'. A post-Christian society may no longer identify as Christian, but it relies on many fundamental terms and ideas which were originally part of the Christian ethos. They have a shared understanding of what it is they no longer believe - which you couldn't have had, had you never been Christian. Similarly with post-modernism. The modern period I put between the Trial of Galileo and the 1920’s, characterized by belief in progress, the normativity of reason and objective fact. Post modernism is characterized by relativism, the contextual nature of truth, and the rejection of meta-narrative. (And yes, @Tom Storm, I learned a lot from Street, but his vituperation was pretty hard to take at times.)

@Pierre-Normand - something you might find of interest. This mini-documentary from CNBC discusses, with many references, the apparent wall that AI is hitting with respect to the ability to reason. Many of the papers cited argue that LLM's, no matter how sophisticated, are really performing pattern-recognition, not rational inference as such. There are examples of typical tests used to assess reasoning ability - the systems perform well at basic formulations of the problem, but past a certain point will begin to utterly fail at them.



In response to my prompt about it, ChatGPT volunteered the following:

The Human Power of Rational Inference

When you say “rational inference,” especially in the context of mathematical intuition or Platonic reasoning, you’re referring to something that:


* Grasps necessity (e.g. that 2+2=4 must be true, always and everywhere),
* Sees truth through intelligibility, not trial-and-error,
* Penetrates meaning rather than merely predicting outcomes,
* And often leaps beyond data, reaching abstract, general truths through insight.


This is not just symbol manipulation, and it’s not mere statistical correlation. It’s an act of noetic insight—what Plato calls noesis, what Descartes calls clear and distinct perception, what Gödel called mathematical intuition, and what Kant calls synthetic a priori judgment.

The Limits of LLMs and AGI
What the CNBC video reflects is something AI researchers are beginning to confront:

LLMs perform astonishingly well at tasks requiring pattern recognition, but falter at tasks requiring deep conceptual understanding or inference.

Examples:

They can complete analogies, generate proofs, or mimic philosophical arguments,

But they often fail to spot contradictions, or to see why something follows from a premise,

And they have no grasp of the necessity, normativity, or insight that underpins genuine reasoning.

Why?

Because they operate by:

Predicting statistically likely sequences of tokens,

Optimizing based on feedback loops,

Lacking any inner “aha!” moment or directed noetic act.

So when you say they “fail past a certain point,” that may be the point where true rational insight is required—not just surface mimicry. — ChatGPT

I think it's philosophically interesting, quite aside from the technical and financial implications.

It's true that an afterlife entails some sort of immaterial existence, but it's fallaciously affirming the consequent to conclude that the presence of immateriality implies or suggests an afterlife. — Relativist

‘Afterlife’ is a term with strong religious overtones, and perhaps it muddies the waters. My point is more modest: as you acknowledge, the so-called explanatory gap—the inability of physicalism to account for subjective consciousness—suggests that a purely physical description of the human is incomplete.

Physicalism generally presumes the causal closure of the physical—that all causes and effects occur within the physical domain. But if that assumption is undermined, then other domains of explanation become conceptually possible. That doesn’t prove dualism, or an afterlife, or any religious doctrine—but it opens space for something beyond the materialist frame.

This quote from biologist Richard Lewontin in a book review spells it out.

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs... because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

So, the materialist commitment is not demanded by science itself, but by a philosophical stance about what counts as an acceptable explanation. The key sentence: "We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Whether or not one believes in a deity, that phrase betrays the anxiety that if materialism is not all-encompassing, then the coherence of the whole system is threatened.

So we’re not dealing with a dispassionate assessment of evidence, but with a boundary-defining metaphysical commitment.

"Fine tuning arguments" depend on the unstated (egocentric) assumption that life is a design objective, rather than an improbable consequence of the way the world happens to be. — Relativist

The attribution of the anthropic principle to a selection effect ("We find the universe fine-tuned because only in a fine-tuned universe could we find ourselves") is logically valid but explanatorily inert - it says nothing but only reaffirms the taken-for-granted nature of existence.

And, of course, for naturalism, existence is taken for granted. It is granted! Naturalism, I like to say, 'assumes nature'. So any line of questioning which interogates that sentiment is dismissed, whereas, in philosophy, it is an opening to a deeper sense of questioning.

The deeper philosophical issue behind the anthropic principle is not just whether our existence is improbable, but whether the existence of a rationally structured, life-permitting cosmos admits of any explanation at all, or whether we must simply accept it as a brute fact—what some, following Monod, would call “chance.”

In his book Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod draws the contrast explicitly: chance is what happens in the absence of reason. It is, in effect, the denial that there is anything intelligible to be found behind or beneath the statistical patterns. In this view, the fact that the universe permits life, consciousness, and rational reflection is not something to be explained—but something that simply happened, and could easily not have.

But this is not a neutral position. It's a philosophical commitment—an affirmation of unintelligibility as the last word. And it stands in deep tension with the most basic assumption of both science and philosophy: that the world is in some sense rational, that its patterns are not only observable but meaningful. That’s what Einstein was gesturing at in his famous remark: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

So the real question isn’t just whether life is improbable, but whether the emergence of beings capable of asking such questions is itself part of an intelligible order—or whether, as Monod would have it, we are the products of blind chance and cosmic indifference.

I don’t think that’s a scientific question. I think that’s the philosophical heart of the matter. So, and perhaps ironically, we find ourselves in a position where naturalism must accept that the universe is, at bottom, irrational—that reason is something we impose or invent for pragmatic survival, but that it has no intrinsic connection to the order of things. On this view, reason isn’t a window into the real, but a useful illusion—evolution’s trick to keep the organism alive. And yet, it’s this very reason we’re asked to trust when making that judgment.

You mention "unruly human nature" - so, do we accept that the "human nature" that has been studied for this 2,600 years is in fact strife, civil disobedience, revolution and war? — Pieter R van Wyk

Human nature has strong tendencies towards those activities. That humans are often inclined to those destructive behaviours is observable thoughout history. How to rein it in and to what ends are questions that indeed occupy philosophers (among others.)

Cite a single historical philosopher who says 'the material world is the whole story'. — 180 Proof

• Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) – Argued that all phenomena, including thought, are explicable in terms of matter in motion. Leviathan opens with: “The universe is corporeal; all that is real is body.”
• Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) – In L’Homme Machine, he argues that humans are essentially sophisticated machines, governed entirely by physical processes.
• Baron d’Holbach (1723–1789) – In The System of Nature, he writes: “Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it... his ideas are the necessary effect of the impressions he receives.” That’s full-blown deterministic materialism.
• Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899) – In Force and Matter, he argues that all spiritual phenomena are explicable through matter and force.
• J. J. C. Smart (1920–2012) – A champion of the mind-brain identity theory: mental states just are brain states.
• David Armstrong (1926–2014) – Argued that mental states are physical states with a certain functional role.
• Paul Churchland & Patricia Churchland – Advocates of eliminative materialism, which holds that beliefs, desires, and intentions as ordinarily understood don’t really exist; they’re just folk-psychological illusions awaiting replacement by neuroscience.
• Daniel Dennett (b. 1942) – A leading proponent of functionalist materialism, famously dismissive of qualia and any notion of non-physical mind. See: Consciousness Explained (1991).
• Alex Rosenberg (b. 1946) – Author of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, where he asserts that physics is all there is, and that even meaning and morality are illusions.

Quiet here, considering what's happened in the last FOUR DAYS :yikes: (although there is discussion in other threads.) But DJT seems to have been on a tear the last four days - whipping Iran and Israel into truce, blowing up the Iranian nuclear program (about which there are caveats) and convincing the Europeans to vastly increase their defense expenditure.

I had in mind mainly the disabling of U.S.A.I.D., RFK jr's war on vaccination, the abolition of NIS grants, and so on. Maybe the Democrats wouldn't restore them, but MAGA sure seems hellbent on destroying them (although that's probably a discussion for the Trump thread, I agree.)

If you're an American elector, supporting the Democratic Party would be a good start. The MAGA party seems intent on dismantling or opposing everything you're standing for.

1. What do you think of the philosophy, and direction of the project? Do you think A.I. has any "place" in philosophy? — 013zen

absolutely. I've been interacting with ChatGPT and despite recognising that it is programmed to be positive about the user it's interacting with, it also comes with ideas and arguments that I hadn't considered. It's also very good at finding sources and citations for ideas.

I've also signed up for (and paid for!) an app called Alter, after having heard a talk on it by John Vervaeke, who was involved in building it. I haven't had the chance to really assess it yet, but I think it's trying to do something similar to what you're up to.

So, yes, very interested to see what you're working on.

Related to this: you seem to be treating the current state of scientific knowledge regarding the origin of the big bang as a jumping off point to your hypothesis about causally efficacious mind. How is this not an argument from ignorance? As mentioned, there are various cosmological hypotheses - these are among the possibilities that you are setting aside in favor of you mind-hypothesis. — Relativist

If I might step in here. Recall the OP:

When God is described as the Ground of Being, this typically means that God is the fundamental reality or underlying source from which all things emerge. God is not seen as a being within the universe, but rather as the condition for existence itself. — Tom Storm

The anthropic principle can be relevant here—not to assert design in a simplistic sense, but to draw attention to the profound structural coherence underlying the cosmos. As Martin Rees pointed out in Just Six Numbers, a handful of fundamental physical constants—each of which cannot be varied without unravelling the entire fabric—determine the very possibility of matter, stars, chemistry, and life. These aren’t merely coincidental either; they function as master constraints that shape the entire cosmic order.

The question is not only why these values are what they are, but why any such finely balanced set of parameters is possible at all. This invites reflection on whether such constraints point to mathematical necessity, or even to truths that are in some sense a priori—true not because of empirical verification, but because they are necessary for any form of complex, knowable reality.

From this perspective, the universe’s intelligibility is not a happy accident, but might be grounded in something like what classical metaphysics calls the Logos—the rational structure underlying being. This isn’t “God of the gaps” reasoning, but an invitation to consider whether reason itself has a ground—and whether that ground might be ontologically prior to the contingent facts of the physical universe.

This isn’t a falsifiable hypothesis in the Popperian sense, but that’s not a flaw—it’s simply because we are operating in the domain of metaphysics, not empirical science. The claim here isn’t that science is wrong, but that it may presuppose metaphysical conditions (like intelligibility, order, and lawlike regularity) that it cannot itself explain (nor needs to!) Metaphysics begins where empirical method reaches its limits.

Whether or not one believes, I think it's at least worth recognizing that this line of thought is logically valid and not reducible to mere “God of the gaps” reasoning. Recognising, too, that in philosophical terms, the Christian mythos revolves around the idea that the soul or essential being has a familial relationship with the intelligence that animates the Cosmos, and that, therefore, the very ability to discern these truths is owed to that heritage.

The question I'm trying to sort out is: what impact does this alleged immateriality of mind have on my overall world view? It doesn't seem to undermine anything, except for the simple (possible) fact that there exists something immaterial. — Relativist

If there's a possibility that oneself is something other than physical, then there is also a possibility that it is not subject to the same fate as everything physical - which is change and decay. When you die, the physical body returns to the elements by either internment or cremation. Is there anything else to it?

I believe there is, but I don't want to believe it on purely dogmatic grounds, either. My intuition is based on several grounds. One is my intuitive sense of having lived prior to this birth, which of course I realise doesn't constitute any kind of evidence. (However, the cases of children with past-life memories does, per this case study.)

Beyond that, what I’m left with are fear and hope. The hope is that we are more than our bodies. The fear is that, if we are, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a comforting outcome. The eschatological traditions warn us that post-mortem destiny might be varied and not always (n fact, mostly not) pleasant.

What I’m increasingly convinced of, though, is that secular philosophy—at least in its mainstream forms—has tended to dismiss these possibilities not because it has disproven them, but largely due to inherited cultural and methodological commitments. It’s not that metaphysical naturalism has decisively answered the question of the soul; rather, it often refuses to ask it, or declares it un-askable.

As we've discussed many times, I believe there are unassailable philosophical arguments against materialism, grounded in the fact that ideas are real but immaterial, and that, therefore, our ability to grasp ideas indicates something fundamental about the nature of the psyche - an argument which is as old as philosophy itself, and one which I believe still holds good.

It’s not that the material world is unreal—it’s that it cannot be the whole story. The reality of meaning, truth, and value all point beyond what materialism can contain, no matter how sophisticated its models.

Why is this? — Pieter R van Wyk

Do you think it might be because the lessons of philosophy may not actually be observed? That if more people actually comported themselves as philosophers, in a spirit of rational self-knowledge and temperance, then there would be correspondingly less strife. But then that can’t really be imposed, it is something that has to be taken up voluntarily. And besides, philosophy itself is generally regarded as a bookish and irrelevant subject by a lot of people.

So - why blame philosophy? Don’t the problems you’re lamenting characterise unruly human nature?

it would only result in more arguments about what ‘dead’ means.

Rigor — Fire Ologist

mortis. :wink:

So you’re rooting for the mullahs?

However, groundbreaking philosophers had such creative ideas that transformed the way we see the world, and even gave rise to new disciplines we now see as essential. So what became so wrong about generating new ideas that challenge the status quo? Why isn’t philosophy about that anymore? — Skalidris

Why is novelty so essential? Isn’t that part of the whole ‘myth of progress’, that only the novel is valuable? That voracious appetite which is driving all of us to constantly seek out news, new developments, new ideas, always rushing forwards?

The foundations of philosophy were laid down in the Axial Age, ‘a period in human history, roughly between the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE, when significant developments in religious and philosophical thought occurred independently in various parts of the world. This period saw the emergence of universalizing modes of thought, including new ethical and spiritual ideas, that laid the foundation for many major world religions and philosophical systems.’ Exemplars are the Greek philosophers, Buddhism, Taoism, and the Semitic religions. The Axial Age depended on the confluence of vast and large-scale developments in culture and society: the formation of the first city-states, the advent of literacy, and widespread appearance and dissemination of cultural myths and legends.

There has of course been ongoing development of all of these traditions, intertwined with further evolution of language, culture, technology and economic practices. But many of the main planks were laid down by Axial Age cultures. And once they were articulated, they couldn’t be redefined or reinvented in entirely new ways. Rather it became a matter of constantly re-interpreting them, and many of those ongoing re-interpretations were indeed novel. But there are only so many ways to re-package the perennial truths of axial-age philosophies, which in the meantime have largely been lost sight of even if they form the basis of the grammar of civilisation.

And they haven’t done that. — Mikie

We don't know that. Just as I wouldn't necessarily believe that their capability has been eliminated, there's also no reason to think it's survived. And I think you're over-estimating the resilience of the regime. They've had many of their top scientists eliminated and whether or not they succeeded in saving some enriched product, their manufacturing base has been hugely diminished. They're already in deep shit economically and isolated politically and militarily. And as much as I dislike Trump, I think the US has the upper hand. If - big if - Iran and Israel do agree to the ceasefire that Trump has (perhaps prematurely) announced, I don't think Iran is going to be in a position to dictate any terms.

Serves no purpose otherwise. — Mikie

Oh, I don’t agree with that. I think the disabling of the Iranian nuclear capacity is crucial. My point rather was scepticism about Trump’s motivation.

I was just listening to an interview with White House gossip-mongering journalist Michael Wolff. Wolff said that Trump really was dithering over the Iran mission until well into last Friday - until someone, probably one of the neo-cons in his orbit, persuaded him that the bombing could be conducted surgically, without too much risk of entanglement or boots on the ground. And that it would make him look good! There’s the golden ticket, right there. And Trump sure as hell loved gloating over it when he came out to the podium in the foyer. Wolff called it ‘a vanity bombing’. As far as Trump’s motivation is concerned, I think it’s likely an accurate description.

the Buddha's view then, still subjective? — Banno

'The Buddha' is not an individual person as such. In the Pali texts recounting the Gautama's final days, he talks about how his body is old and worn 'like an old cart'. In those contexts, he refers to himself in the first person 'I am getting old'. But when conveying the teaching, he uses the impersonal term 'tathagatha'. (Quite what the identity of the Buddha is, is dealt with in an encounter with a questioner who demands an answer, 'are you a god' (no) 'a demon' (no) 'a man' (no - I am awakened, i.e. Buddha.))

The point I'm trying to press, is that scientific objectivity is still embedded in an intellectual context, which embodies particular assumptions and axioms, notably about the nature of what can be understood and measured, what is amenable and tractable to precise measurement and quantification. Within that context, the scientist seeks to ameliorate all trace of personal proclivity, confirmation bias, and so on, so as to derive a result or frame an hypothesis which is confirmable by others. It is fundamentally third-person in nature.

Philosophical detachment is different. It shares many characteristics with scientific objectivity but with a crucial difference. While both aim to transcend personal biases and arrive at an understanding of what is truly so, philosophical detachment seeks its goal through self-transcendence rather than by bracketing out the subjective altogether.

To understand this distinction, first differentiate the subjective from the personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual. Philosophical detachment requires rising above, or seeing through, these personal inclinations, but not through denying or bracketing out the entire category of subjective understanding. And that's because we ourselves are agents, not objects - we're not the species h.sapiens as objects for science, but living beings who are inextricably involved in our lives.

So there's a real distinction there.

Se the problem? — Banno

Disinterested doesn't mean not caring. It's disinterest in the sense that a judicial officer or doctor is disinterested - has no personal interest.

They hold that the Buddha is perfectly disinterested: having eradicated every trace of craving, aversion, and delusion, he sees without distortion or agenda.
— Wayfarer
To be disinterested in the suffering of others doesn't appear all that admirable. — Banno

See the monk with dysentery. The Buddha upbraids the monks for not caring for one of their number who has dysentery and personally attends to him. "If you don't tend to one another, who then will tend to you? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.”

As far as ‘the view from nowhere’ - there’s a world of difference between scientific objectivity and philosophical detachment, subject of this essay:

The difficulty with the strictly objectivist approach is that it leaves no room at all for the subject— for us, in fact, as human beings. Viewed objectively, instead, h.sapiens is a fortuitous by–product of the same essentially mindless process that causes the movements of the planets; we’re one species amongst many others.

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation? — Srap Tasmaner

Something I discovered through Buddhist studies is that one of the defining virtues of a Buddha is the capacity to see “things as they truly are.” This is conveyed by the Sanskrit term yathābhūtaṃ, often translated as “in reality,” “in truth,” or more emphatically, “really, definitely, absolutely.” According to my lexical research, cross-cultural equivalents include the Platonic alēthēs epistēmē—true knowledge—and the Latin veritas rerum, the truth of things.

An obvious objection comes to mind: But isn’t that a religious claim? Buddhism is a religion, so this is just another worldview—precisely the kind of thing we’re meant to be questioning.

This brings to mind the distinction in anthropology between emic and etic perspectives. An emic perspective interprets a culture from within, using concepts meaningful to its participants; an etic perspective observes from outside, applying supposedly neutral, cross-cultural terms. But as thinkers like Thomas Kuhn have shown, the etic stance is still a perspective. It never quite attains the neutrality it claims, despite its scientific aspirations. So where does that leave us? Are we doomed to an endless relativism of schemes?

Interestingly, from the emic standpoint of early Buddhism, this isn’t an irresolvable dilemma. In fact, the Pāli texts repeatedly describe the Buddha as having abandoned all views—what they call the "thicket of views," the tangle of conceptual proliferations (MN 2). The Buddha is said to have transcended not only wrong views, but view-taking as such. From this perspective, he does not occupy a standpoint but has relinquished all standpoint. Naturally, from the outside, this may sound like just another doctrinal claim—of course Buddhists would say that! But the Buddhist tradition also provides a strong philosophical rationale. They hold that the Buddha is perfectly disinterested: having eradicated every trace of craving, aversion, and delusion, he sees without distortion or agenda. He has no ‘dog in the fight.’ In this sense, his insight is not a matter just of detached observation but of existential transformation.

There is an intriguing Western parallel here. In The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Peter Harrison argues that early modern science emerged not from naïve rationalism but from a deeply Augustinian concern: that human reason, corrupted by original sin, was no longer capable of grasping reality as it truly is. Science, then, became an ameliorative discipline—a method to correct fallen perception and restore, as it were, the veritas rerum that Adam once possessed.

One could dismiss this too as merely a Christian rationalization. But what interests me is the shared intuition: that true knowledge is not just a matter of method but of moral or spiritual purification and insight. In both cases, the obstacle to seeing things as they are is not merely intellectual error but an egological distortion.

From a Buddhist point of view, the condition for seeing yathābhūtaṃ is not a superior argument but the cessation of clinging. And from Harrison’s perspective, scientific reason arose not in spite of man’s flawed nature but because of it—as a response to the failure of pure insight in a fallen condition.

Both views reflect what might be called the sapiential dimension: that wisdom is not simply the correct deployment of reason within a framework, but the transformation of the knower. It is precisely this dimension—where epistemology shades into ethics and spiritual practice—that tends to be overlooked in the analytic tradition, but which I think is essential to this discussion.

Very sad indeed, a patient and articulate contributor here for many years. :broken:

And now we’ve stumbled upon one of the central confusions of communication: we use words like “real,” “physical,” and “objective,” without having any rock-solid idea what they refer to. They work well enough for practical purposes—don’t touch the stove, it’s matter and it’s hot. But when we slow things down and look closely, the bedrock starts to look like smoke. There is no stable ground to land on. The closer we try to get to the thing itself, the more it unravels into interpretation, probability, model, rule. — Kurt

The Greek philosophers also entertained these arguments. They begin by questioning what appears indubitably obvious to all of us, namely, the reality of appearance. How do we know what amongst this flux of sensations is real? Bedrock real, indubitably so? Nowadays it's easy to sit at a computer and compose questions like these, but I sense the early philosophers asked these questions with a seriousness of intent and concentration that is not easily conveyed and that we don't appreciate. We only see more words - and then incorporate those words into our pragmatic fantasy.

This fragile, approximate nature of language shapes the way we build our understanding of reality. Our use of language enables us to construct what might be called a pragmatic fantasy—a model of reality that works well enough to build societies, conduct science, and write books like this one. — Kurt

A comparable metaphor from another source might be the Māyā of Indian mythology. Māyā is a power that veils the true nature of reality, making the material world appear real and endowing it with a kind of intrinsic reality which it does not really possess. Why? Because reality includes the subject, which is not found amongst the panorama of phemomena, but is that to whom all of this appears and occurs. The nature of the subject - 'who am I?' - is understood to be the gordian knot, the unravelling of which dispels the power of māyā.

And when I talk to you about matter, I don’t feel the need to explain what I mean. The word feels obvious. You know what matter is. You learned it in school. You’re made of it. You don’t need to look it up. You’ve seen pictures in science books, maybe even watched documentaries about how it's all just atoms and fields and particles buzzing about with some weird “emptiness” in between. Most of us, even those with only a vague interest in science, have picked up a mental image of matter—and this image feels good enough. — Kurt

That's because our culture has defined reality in such a way that materialism seems to the only viable attitude. Criticisms of materialism seem inexorably to point towards a metaphysic, often somehow religious, which is not compatible with the mainstream analysis, the 'pragmatic fantasy' you describe. But the times are changing, and many voices, not all of them religious in any obvious way, are beginning to call that into question.

Including yours.

Eriugena has the distinction of nothing through privation and nothing on account of excellence. But then latter would in some sense be the fullness or all possibility, total actuality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Just so.

What's your definition of counting? Is counting an act outside the phenomenal plane? — Quk

Phenomena are what appears. The act of counting is performed by the subject to whom phenomena appear.

That question gets back to the issue that I have with this whole discussion thread: it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together. — SophistiCat

But that's just characteristic of the plight of modernity - the collision of all of these different and in some ways incommensurable perspectives. We've inherited all of that and are trying to make sense of it.

In terms of philosophy, I think the disconnect between physical causation and logical relationships can be traced back to Hume.

Hume famously argued that our idea of causation—that one event necessarily brings about another—is not grounded in either rational insight or logical necessity. Instead, it arises from habit or custom: we observe that event A is regularly followed by event B, and we come to expect B after A. But this expectation is psychological, not logical.

There is no contradiction in imagining A occurring without B. This means causal connections are not logically necessary. They’re not like mathematical truths, where denying the conclusion entails contradiction.

Hume distinguishes sharply between:

• Relations of ideas (necessary truths, a priori, such as mathematics and logic), and
• Matters of fact (empirical, contingent truths, such as causation in the natural world).

The upshot: causation is observational, not rational. It’s a habit of mind, not a structure of reality. Combine that with the division of the world into the primary (measurable) and secondary (subjective) domains, and the Cartesian division of mind from world, and the rupture is complete.

Hume’s Famous Verdict

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XII

This isn’t just upstart empiricism. It’s a rejection of the entire Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition, where formal and final causes underpinned the intelligibility of the cosmos.

(And never mind that Hume’s treatise falls by those same criteria!)

Before and After Hume:

In pre-modern thought—especially in Aristotelian and Scholastic realism —causation was metaphysically grounded. Causes had real powers or essences, and effects flowed from them necessarily. Causal necessity was built into the intelligibility of nature itself.

After Hume, this conception collapses. Causation is no longer a rational structure but a pattern of observed regularities. This shift paves the way for positivism, empiricism, and the modern view that physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive: they summarize what happens, but don’t explain why. This is the basis for the charge that modernism is in some sense irrational (despite its constant appeals to science).

The Broader Consequences:

Scientific laws come to be seen as contingent, not expressions of an intelligible order.

The gap between rational necessity (in logic and mathematics) and physical causation (in nature) becomes unbridgeable. Hence Wittgenstein says in TLP "The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Why an illusion? Because we mistake description for explanation. We observe regularities, formulate laws (e.g., Newton’s laws, or later, field equations), and then treat those laws as if they explain what they describe.

Hume's message, in effect: you think causation is rational, but you're just projecting your expectations onto the world. And how often do we see this sentiment echoed in debates on the Forum?

. Substantial form doesn't exist outside substances or the intellect. There is the form "cat" 'in' cats themselves and 'in' the intellect of knowers. But the form has to be to be to be informing these things in the same way a table must exist for a book to rest on it. Yet it seems possible for there to be cats but not creatures with intellects. The existence of the form vis-á-vis cats is not dependent on the existence of the form in finite intellects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree that from an empirical perspective we encounter particulars first, and then abstract the form. But I wonder whether that perspective risks treating the form as derivative —something we derive from the object. In the Platonic (and arguably Aristotelian) sense, form is not something posterior to the object, but that in virtue of which the object is what it is.

That is, form isn’t just a feature we discover by experience—it’s the condition that makes experience possible. It's because of the reality of the form that we can identify the particular. It’s ontologically prior, even if not temporally so. This is where I’d place form in a “vertical” rather than horizontal order—closer to what Neoplatonism or even certain strains of phenomenology suggest.

I wonder whether framing form as something abstracted from sensible experience is more of an empiricist perspective (e.g. J S Mill) than Aristotelian.

I didn't think “undifferentiated givenness” meant to refer to anything eternal, but rather the immediacy of sense certainty without any mediation. So I was thinking in the order of experience. In the order of created, changing (physical) being, my thoughts would be that for anything to be anything at all, it has to have some sort of actuality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I speak of “undifferentiated givenness” or the in-itself, I don’t mean it as some kind of vague or latent actuality, waiting to be identified. To say it must have “some sort of actuality” is already to try to give it form—to insert it into the order of knowable, nameable things, to say what it is. But the point is: we can’t do that without distorting what we’re trying to indicate. Here is where 'apophatic silence' is precisely correct.

That’s why I describe it as “neither existent nor non-existent.” It’s not an actualised thing, but it’s also not mere nothingness. This is something I’ve taken primarily from the Madhyamaka tradition in Buddhist philosophy, which insists on the middle way (hence the name) - between reification (it is something!) and nihilism (it doesn't exist). In that framework, we are dealing with what is empty of intrinsic existence, but not therefore non-existent. It’s not a substance, but nor is it nothing. It’s a kind of ontological openness. That is the meaning of śūnyatā.

So yes, it’s a very difficult conceptual point—one that sits uneasily in the categories of Greek metaphysics, which are more comfortable with ousia and actuality. But I’d argue that the in-itself is precisely what resists actualisation, and that’s why we can’t approach it as “some kind of actuality” without losing what the idea was trying to preserve in the first place. This review of The Silence of the Buddha by Raimon Panikkar may be of interest. It’s a remarkably careful attempt to think through how the Buddhist idea of the Unconditioned—which is beyond being and non-being—can speak to theological and metaphysical questions in the West, including the issue of God and Being. It also addresses some of the points we’ve been discussing, particularly about ultimate ground, causation, and the intelligibility of existence.

I would object to the idea that mathematical objects are "mind independent." If they have no intelligibility, no quiddity, no eidos, then they are nothing at all, but to possess these is to have intellectual content. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That seems right to me. I’d say mathematical and logical truths are independent of any particular mind—they aren’t invented by us or dependent on individual thought—but they’re also only accessible through mind. So in that sense, they’re not “mind-dependent” in the subjective or psychological sense, but they are only perceptible to the mind (the pre-Kantian meaning of 'noumenal').

I think this is where Plato’s notion of metaxy is relevant—that humans occupy a kind of in-between status, as participants in both the sensible world of becoming and the intelligible world of being. We’re the bridge between the two, and it's in this role that we encounter things like numbers and forms: not as physical entities, but as realities that can only be grasped from within the horizon of intelligibility.

This “in-between” condition—neither purely empirical nor purely intelligible—is what makes the Platonic view so compelling in discussions like this. It avoids collapsing ideas into mere mental projections, while also refusing to treat them as physical facts. They’re real, but their reality is of a different order—something we participate in rather than simply observe.

Plantinga was mentioned in passing and I expressed the view that Relativist’s depiction of his argument was based on a misinterpretation. That’s all I have to say on Plantinga.

Here’s Plantinga’s paper.

Life seems anomolous to me, because it's a very rare, and miniscule part of the universe. What facts am I overlooking? — Relativist

The fact that you’re alive would be a good start. You’re demonstrating the very point at issue: the sense in which physicalism excludes the subject, for whom ‘the physical’ is real. As I said at the very beginning of this exchange: physicalism relies on an abstraction. It then becomes so embedded in that worldview that it can’t see anything outside it, which is precisely the blind spot of physicalism.

The ultimate source of our cognitive faculties is natural selection, and natural selection is interested (so to speak) only in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. A given belief, therefore, will have a certain causal role to play in the production of adaptive behavior; but whether it is true or false is irrelevant from this perspective. So the naturalist who accepts evolutionary theory has a defeater for the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable. — Alvin Plantinga

Which I paraphrased as follows:

if all mental life—including reason—is understood solely in terms of material and efficient causes, then we’ve undermined the very basis on which we make rational inferences." — Wayfarer

On review, I agree it was not an accurate paraphrase. It would have been better expressed as follows: ‘If our cognitive faculties are ultimately the product of unguided natural selection, which only accounts for behaviors that promote survival and reproduction, then we have no good reason to trust that our beliefs, including the belief in naturalism itself, are actually true.’

In either case, your original criticism of Plantinga’s argument, that it was ‘fatally flawed’ because it didn’t allow for how important adaptive behaviour is to survival, still missed the point. He is arguing that evolutionary biology may account for how animals adapt and survive, but that this in itself does not provide grounds for us to believe that an argument is true, when, according to those criteria, it might simply be adaptive.

Hard-hitting OP in the NY Times today (gift link), about how many impeachable offenses Trump 2.0 has already committed, and how blatantly corrupt and outright illegal many of his actions have been. A sample:

Trump has repeatedly ignored due process of law, such as in sending people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and to the South Sudan without a semblance of due process. The cutoff of funds to universities and to grant recipients has been done without any due process. This is a very serious abuse of power.

President Trump has used his power for retribution. His actions against law firms, which have been done without due process, have been expressly stated to be for personal retribution because they employed lawyers who investigated or prosecuted him. This is a very serious abuse of power.

The impoundment of funds — cutting off funds appropriated by Congress in a myriad of programs, including for scientific research, for international aid, for colleges and universities, for agencies created by Congress — is unconstitutional and illegal. It is unconstitutional because it is usurping Congress’s spending power, and it is illegal because it violates the Impoundment Control Act. This is a very serious abuse of power causing great harm.

President Trump is using the military for domestic law enforcement in Los Angeles in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and a long tradition against such use of the military within the United States. This is a very frightening abuse of power.

It is clear that he is personally profiting from being president, with his cryptocurrency profiteering and his accepting an airplane as a personal gift and his real estate deals. This violates the emoluments clauses of the Constitution. — Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley law school

It is obvious that Trump regards himself as above the law, and that his flunkies and sycophants all believe it. It's pathetic that the American political institutions have become so ineffective as to enable these blatantly illegal and immoral acts to be propogated from within the nation's highest office.

Article notes that the supine and compliant Congress will never take Trump to task, but let's hope that justice is eventually done.

Right, so is this "undifferentiated giveness" first in the order of being or in the order of our experience? It seems obvious that it comes first in our particular experience, yet the ontological priority of something wholly undifferentiated would seem to cause problems in terms of what follows from what is truly undifferentiated as a cause (which would seem to be, nothing, or nothing in particular). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This might be a point where we’re crossing conceptual wires a bit—because I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ontological and temporal priority.

When you ask whether “undifferentiated givenness” is first in the order of being or in the order of experience, I wonder whether that’s still considering the question from a temporal perspective. The eternal is not temporally prior, because it’s outside of time—so it can be said to be ontologically prior, as the ground or condition of temporal existence. But treating it as temporally prior still risks a kind of reductionism.

So perhaps we’re better off thinking in terms of dependence relations, rather than temporal or linear sequences. The structured world depends on this givenness to be disclosed; but the givenness itself depends on deeper conditions—what might traditionally be called the Logos or the Good—not as temporal precursors, but as metaphysical grounds. Which is why cognition is constrained by the forms through which the One manifests.

This connects with something I’ve been reflecting on in terms of the distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes of being.

The horizontal axis is what we ordinarily think of as “the order of experience”: time, causality, physical phenomena, the unfolding of events—everything science deals with. It’s the world as it appears, structured into before and after, subject and object. When we talk about whether something comes “first” in this order, we’re already inside a temporal sequence.

But the vertical axis isn’t about temporal sequence—it’s about ontological dependence, or what grounds the very possibility of appearance. It’s what makes the horizontal axis intelligible at all. This includes not only the subject as knower, but also what precedes and grounds both subject and object: what Kant might call the noumenal, or the in-itself. It also includes the metaphysical principles that shape intelligibility—form, the Good, intelligible structure—not as things that happen within time, but as conditions for time and experience to arise at all. But we can't know that as object or in an objective sense (which is precisely why positivism rejects it as 'meaningless'.)

I think this is where a reference to Plotinus is pertinent. For Plotinus, the One is not a being among beings—not even the highest or most perfect being. The one is beyond existence—not because it’s less real, but because it is more real than anything that can be said to exist (i.e. what is coming-to-be and passing away). The source of existence is not something that exists! That means it does not ‘exist’ in the same way anything else does—it's not simply a very special thing among other things. It’s beyond existence, not any thing (which is also what Eriugena says.)

This is also what I take “beyond existence” to mean—not nothingness, not a void, but that which grounds existence without itself being an existent. It’s not non-existent, but it doesn’t exist the way things do. It’s “no thing,” but not nothing. Any statement that attributes existence to the One, as if it were a definable entity, risks collapsing that distinction. As Paul Tillich put it, “To say that God exists is to deny him”—because what is ultimate cannot be reduced to the category of an existent.

Whose the knower? An individual man, or mankind? It seems to me that the natural numbers must be prior to individuals, since they are already around and known by others before we are born.

Now, if mankind is the only species with the capacity for intellectual knowledge, I think there might be a sense in which the natural numbers could be said to be posterior to man, but they also seem obviously prior in another sense.

The sense in which the natural numbers are prior lies in the fact that there were discrete organisms, organic wholes with a principle of unity, long before man existed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, the question is the sense in which numbers are prior. Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. So they are not temporally prior, even though there were obviously numbers of things that existed before anyone was around to count them.

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. — Richard Tieszen, Phenomenology, Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, p13

So, what consciousness are they constituted in, if it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions of them or awareness of them? I'd be wary about entering an answer to that question. Suffice to say they are real possiblities that can only be apprehended by a rational intelligence - not neccessarily yours or mine (definitely not mine, as I'm bad at math.)

But bad at it or not, maths deals in necessary truths. And it’s precisely this sense of necessity that makes the question “where does logic come from?” so important. We’re not just talking about how humans happen to reason, or how nature happens to behave, but about the conditions that make truth, structure, and intelligibility possible at all - how reason is imposed upon us.

This would be the idea that there is no squirrel or owl prior to our knowing it as such, that our knowing makes it what it is — Count Timothy von Icarus

What about the natural numbers and the law of the excluded middle. Do they exist before our knowing them as such?